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Charter school access means nothing if the schools are bad (Column)

By Tom Watkins, Special to The Oakland Press

Posted:
07/17/2013 01:44:34 PM EDT

Updated:
07/23/2013 04:44:12 PM EDT

Volunteer Christopher Hernandez, 13, places a jewelry box to dry at Lincoln Charter School in York Wednesday, July 10, 2013. Third-graders in the Roar for Learning summer program decorated the boxes as part of an entrepreneurial focus. The boxes will be sold later in the summer. DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS - KATE PENN (YORK DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS -)

The debate about the value of charter schools rages on. Are charter schools a success or failure? As someone who was part of the "movement" nearly from the inception 20 years ago and can lay claim to helping create the first charters in two different states (Michigan and Florida) and having consulted with countless others in their quest to start a charter school, I can say "both."

In 1995, I wrote an article for the national magazine Education Week foreshadowing what sadly has played out in the charter school movement and what we are witnessing today. I said at the time charter school advocates tend to fall into one of three categories:

Zealots and ideologues: These people tend to view charter schools passionately as a way toward "the truth," or at least as a stopgap solution to public education's problems that will suffice until they can get a voucher system in place.

Entrepreneur scoundrels: There are gross profits being made, and some charter management are getting the gold mine while the taxpayers and students are getting the shaft.

There are clear cases of charter-school management companies making hundreds of thousands — if not millions — in annual profit on real estate deals alone while failing to educate children. Sadly, their actions are not illegal under current law, but should be.

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Their motive is greed, not service. Look out for these so-called entrepreneurs in education.

Child-, parent- and teacher-centered reformers: These individuals and organizations realize that reform requires boldness and risk taking. To them, charter schools are not anti-public education, but pro-child and pro-public choice.

Not much has changed. Today, similar to traditional public schools, charter schools have a network of apologists and lobbyists intent on protecting their gains into the educational market and have become in many cases the new status quo. Like traditional public schools, charter schools today cover the spectrum — from the good, the bad and the ugly. This includes both traditional and charter schools not educating our children.

We need one quality and accountability standard. We must demand transparency, efficiency and effectiveness in how billions of our tax dollars are being spent and quality outcomes for our students.

We need to stop the ideological debate, from both the left and right — the left condemning all charters and the right believing once the charter moniker is invoked it turns a lousy school into a good one. We need to arrive at the point where the only adjective before the word "school" that matters is quality.

The ideological fights from the state capitol have never educated a single child. At the end of the day, when we focus on teaching, learning and children and quality — and not power, control, politics and adults — good things happen for our kids.

A lousy school not educating our kids is not worthy of anyone's support and should be made better or be closed, whether it is “traditional' or “charter.' Can't we all agree on that?

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